GMA Through The Years
a new meaning to "Power in Blood"
In the Philippines, winning an election does not mean that you were voted into office.
Arroyo entered politics in 1992, running for senator. She ranked 13th in the elections, winning a three-year term. Arroyo filed over 400 bills and authored or sponsored 55 laws during her tenure as senator, including the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law, the Indigenous People’s Rights Law, and the Export Development Act. She was re-elected in 1995, topping the senatorial elections with nearly 16 million votes.
On June 30, 1998, she was sworn in as vice president under then-president Joseph Estrada. A scant 3 years later, Estrada was forced to resign by EDSA II (otherwise known as People Power II; the first was held under the Marcos Regime), making Arroyo our president.
Now, it’s seven years later, and she still has the seat. She is supposed to relinquish her position on 2010, but there is doubt that she’ll give up the seat of power that easily. If there’s one thing that she’s shown, it’s how tenaciously she clings to her presidency.
She is the only president to survive two impeachment attempts (which never reached the trial stage) with position intact. She has survived two attempted mutinies. She has survived numerous scandals that, each on their own, would have sent lesser politicos running: the Jose Pidal Controversy; the Hello Garci Scandal; the fact that she ran for the presidency in 2004 after publicly announcing that she would not; Proclamation 1017; the “National Broadband Network Deal” (ZTE); the charter change that almost happened in the dead of night; the pardoning of Former President Estrada, who was proven guilty. The list goes on and on.
Most distressing of all, however, are her many violations of human rights. Extra-judicial killings in the Philippines have reached an appalling number. On the Global Peace Index, out of the 194 independent countries recognized, we are hovering in the lower 20’s; we are in the bottom 13 percent. We are respectively below Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, and the Republic of Congo. We are a little bit above Maldives, Somalia, Singapore, and Russia.
During The Marcos regime, which lasted 21 years, the number of victims of extra judicial killings under martial law reached over 1500 with over 800 abductions and enforced dissappearances.
Human rights groups say that the toll extra judicial killings have has risen to 830 lives since Arroyo became president in 2001, but Task Force Usig, a special police unit tasked to probe the murders, counts only 115 and says most of these are the result of a supposed internal purge by communist rebels. Note that Arooyo herself formed Task Force Usig, which is therefore biased, while The UN itself (as stated by Philip Austen) puts extra judicial killings at over 800, along with Karapatan, a local human rights group.
If that doesn’t quite alarm you enough, there’s more. On February 8, 2007, the Congress approved of The Human Security Act of 2007. The bill makes terrorism a crime and allows authorities to arrest terror suspects without warrants and temporarily detain them without charges. The HSA defines a terrorist as someone who causes widespread fear and panic. Is Al Gore a terrorist, then, for informing us of global warming? The law also allows for surveillance on private property by the government, without consent.
It seems that 7 years after being sworn in as president during a political rally, she has forgotten how she got into office, forgotten what she used to stand for: fighting for freedom, fighting corruption, fighting for the Filipino. When public officials forget what they stand for, forget their country and the vow they took to serve its people, then it’s time to step down.
SOURCES:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/364302/Ferdinand-E-Marcos
http://www.hwwilson.com/print/cbintl_arroyo_biography.htm
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/philippines0607/1.htm#_Toc170279547
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view_article.php?article_id=49657
http://www.congress.gov.ph/download/ra_13/RA09372.pdf
Epicurealis 